Paul Ryan repeats a lie in his RNC Convention speech blaming President Obama for a GM plant that closed before Obama too office. He's done it before, and the Detroit News has called him on it. But, he appears not to care.
Ryan said, "Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That’s what he said in 2008." ... "Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year," Ryan continued. "It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
It's an attack Ryan has used before, and one that the Detroit News has called inaccurate: "In fact, Obama made no such promise and the plant halted production in December 2008, when President George W. Bush was in office," Detroit News reporter David Sherpardson wrote earlier this month. "Obama did speak at the plant in February 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested."
Senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod pounced on the claim in a tweet: "Again, Ryan blames Obama for a GM plant that closed under Bush. But then, they did say they wouldn't "let fact checkers get in the way."
These are not gaffes, or errors, that Ryan, and Romney correct and apologize for once they are made aware, but an intentional ongoing strategy of lies. After months of not being able to get above 46% in head to head polls, Romney has apparently to throw even a shallow pretense of integrity out the window. He continues to use the ads lying about President Obama supporting wavers welfare's work requirement. A few days ago, I read a list of 12 major lies Romney continues to use.
On Monday, Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said, "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."
In terms of qualifications to be Vice President, Ryan is replicating this double error modeled by Romney, not only lying but commit a strategic judgment error to sacrificing their longer-term integrity for short-term political gain. After a lifetime of attempting to cultivate a good reputation in his church, his business partners, his family, our own nation, to people around the world, and in his own mind, Romney chooses to disgrace himself for trivial, to negligent advantage.
This is not very smart, and raises another whole possible dimension of how Romney and Ryan are not suitable to hold to two highest offices in the lands. David Axelrod cleverly diagnosed this compulsive pattern-of-behavior in Romney back in February.
Wed Aug 29, 2012 at 9:54 PM PT: Puddytat just posted a whole bunch of other lies as well.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Wed Aug 29, 2012 at 10:07 PM PT: Well, this didn't take long. Here's a Boston Globe article out 30 minutes ago, talking about the risk Ryan is taking to his long-term credibiity.
Peter S Canellos writes Paul Ryan’s attacks on Obama may hurt his own credibility.
Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night could mark the launch of a great career – but it could also be the start of a long journey into the wilderness of extremism. It was less about Ryan’s own vaunted budget plan than an attack, in the needling voice of the House GOP majority, on President Obama’s economic stewardship. ...
But Ryan’s bill of particulars against Obama strained credibility enough to damage his own, not-quite-earned reputation as a straight shooter. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a General Motors plant in Wisconsin – a cheeky move for a vice-presidential nominee whose standard-bearer once wrote that the government should allow all of GM to go bankrupt.
He attacked Obama’s stimulus bill, a large percentage of which was comprised of tax cuts and aid to states to cover the salaries of teachers and law-enforcement workers who would otherwise have been laid off, as “political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.” The cronyism charge, in particular, hasn’t even been taken seriously by Ryan’s own GOP House colleagues.
This article is worth reading.